Nate Monroe - "How do you Know?" - USA Today Columnist Speaks Truth to Power

Swan Dive

Nate Monroe writes a column about Florida for USA Today, exploring how power works in the gilded, strange heart of the modern Republican Party. His irony and rapier wit have made him a reader favorite but have also ruffled some significant feathers. Previously an investigative reporter for Jacksonville's Florida Times-Union, Nate focused on covering Jacksonville City Hall, the largest municipal government in Florida. His most notable deep-dive exposed a massive, nefarious scheme to sell Jacksonville's city-owned power company to Florida Power & Light ... and led to an indictment and jail time for the local CEO, an enormous win for justice and transparency. For this excellent work, he was surveilled and threatened. “It was obviously surreal," says Nate, "to open a batch of records that I had some sense was about the controversy and to actually discover that there was stuff about me in there” - his full Social Security number, driver’s license and a list of friends dating back to childhood — information not readily available as a public record. His lived experience as a target of attack on the media and honest reporting is emblematic of the challenges facing democracy today. Still, Nate loves his job, is built for it. An old school journalist who came up through the ranks, Nate remains undaunted about speaking truth to power. Prior to arriving in Jacksonville in 2013, he was a small town beat reporter for newspapers in the Deep South, where he wrote about hurricanes, small-town corruption, oil spills, Army Corps screw-ups, Mardi Gras, and bingo nights at the senior citizens center. Nate's work is absolutely critical to keeping our democracy healthy and alive.
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